Y Combinator CEO Shares How They Pick Winners, Advice For Founders + Lessons From Paul Graham | Garry Tan Interview

**Garry Tan** (0:00)
I don't think people are prepared or even aware of what's about to happen right now. And it's like super, super good news for anyone who's running a business.

**Shaan Puri** (0:18)
Sam, have you seen, I feel like there's a new meme that got birthed, and I think Garry's involved with it now, which is the learn to cook loser. Have you seen this, Sam?

**Sam Parr** (0:26)
What is that?

**Shaan Puri** (0:27)
What is that? Gary, can you explain this one?

**Garry Tan** (0:29)
I don't even know what it was a reply to, but it seems to be going viral, so it's a good meme.

**Shaan Puri** (0:35)
I think somebody, Paul Graham was talking about cooking. He was giving his kid advice, and he's like, when you have a girlfriend or something like that, they love to come home to the smell of a meal being cooked. And then someone immediately, random Twitter troll is like, why are you raising a feminine man? He should be masculine, he doesn't need to learn to cook. And then I think Paul's reply was, learn to cook, loser. And then all the builders, like Amjad and other places, like tech people were like, you know, this is actually good general advice. Like learn to cook as a high agency way of living. I think it's like the compressed idea of, you know, build things, actually make things, actually go do things in the world that are of value. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

**Garry Tan** (1:18)
It's a more succinct version of make something people want.

**Shaan Puri** (1:21)
Yeah, it's the punched up version, learn to cook, loser.

**Sam Parr** (1:25)
Is Paul Graham like the definition of success, basically built like one of the greatest companies of all time, YC? And then it started working well and then just bales to Europe where he's living in a, I don't actually know if this is true, but it appears he's living in the woods, writing and being with his family. And I'm like, is this guy, did he just pull the ultimate move and it worked out perfectly?

**Garry Tan** (1:50)
I think so. I think he really did.

**Shaan Puri** (1:53)
What's your version of that?

**Garry Tan** (1:54)
I mean, more or less like YC as a concept is like kind of a miracle. It's, you know, there are very, very few places in the world where anything like YC ever happens. And then I just feel like I need to be like the watcher on the wall. It's like, okay, let's, this thing is working. And then it's working for relatively mysterious reasons that are almost too obvious. I mean, it's but at once a mystery and it's obvious. YC itself is like pretty earnest. Like it's just make something people want applying this thing. We'll try to go through and sincerely find the things we think could be really, really big. And then we just give you a bunch of money and throw you in a room with all the other people who are sort of the top 1% of people trying to do that thing. And then somehow some magic happens where, you know, 5 to 10% of those companies become worth a billion dollars or more.
And, you know, YC takes some equity but not that much, you know, like 7% specifically for people who often wouldn't have access to that capital or that network, like by default, anywhere, anywhere else. I mean, so it's kind of cool. It's just, you know, 1 plus 1 equals 3 in a really unusual way. It sort of resembles a college in some ways, you know, only instead of people paying tuition, like we pay them.

**Shaan Puri** (3:21)
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**Sam Parr** (3:54)
You know, when I think of good brands, a lot of people will just think of like, like funny or cool things. But when you think of like what Black Rock or Goldman, like some of these names are kind of like Harvard. Yeah, or Harvard. They're like, they're a little ominous and like a little scary, but they're institutions. Do you ever purposely think how do we become an institution? Or is this just all because of you just said, let's have high standards. Like was it on purpose or did it just happen because you had good values? How does that happen?